America`s shame:Indian perspective

[Guest guest]

America`s shame & shock in Iraq

 

BY INDER MALHOTRA

 

Those who had warned that America's unilateral and patently

unjustified invasion of Iraq would turn that country into "George W.

Bush's Vietnam" and were laughed out for this may now be having the

last laugh. For, their dire and depressing prophecy looks like

coming true. In fact, the mess into which the U.S. president and his

neo-conservative cohorts, better known as "neocons", have landed

themselves could be worse than that in Vietnam a generation ago.

 

Of course, there is no need for glee or gloating over this. Because,

despite the gravity of the folly of the United States in launching

the second Gulf War, its failure in Iraq would do no good to

anybody. It would give huge comfort and encouragement only the

forces of terrorism while luckless Iraq, unlike Vietnam in the

Seventies of the last century, might descend into utter chaos and

disintegration. Even so, facts must be faced squarely. A quick look

at them would underscore how grim the situation is and how the

American forces of occupation are complicating it instead of

resolving it.

 

How many people remember the swagger and smugness with which Bush

had landed on an aircraft carrier in full military uniform on May 1,

2003 proudly to proclaim that "active combat" was over? Exactly 12

months later the hollowness of these resounding words is

reverberating round the globe.

 

All through this period attacks on American troops have continued

and have taken a heavy toll. In the month of April alone there were

126 American casualties and sixteen more were killed over the first

three days of May. At the time of writing an American base near the

holy city of Najaf was under attack.

 

Three other facts are even more alarming. First, the pretence of

the "neocons" that resistance to the "coalition forces" was limited

to the "remnants of the Saddam regime" and some foreign terrorists

who had "infiltrated" into Iraq, ironically, after Saddam's defeat,

has been blown sky-high. The wide world has witnessed for itself

that the "insurgency" (this is a word used by the U.S. media, too)

against the American occupation is very widespread and deep-seated.

So much so that after every bomb or rocket attack on American troops

crowds cheer and chant that "compared with the `criminal American

imperialists' even Saddam was better"! Who could have thought that

the U.S. would be so inept as to unite the Shias and Sunnis of Iraq

against itself?

 

>From this follows the second rude reality culminating in America's

military humiliation in the embattled town of Fallujah. Having first

declared haughtily that they would give no quarter to the rebels

there, the U.S. command soon sued for a cease-fire. Ultimately, the

marines had to undergo the mortification of withdrawing under duress

their tanks, heavy weapons, barbed-wire roadblocks and themselves

and handing over the control of Fallujah to an entirely Iraqi force,

headed by one of Saddam's generals. Every TV watcher has seen the

images of the tame American turnabout and the wild welcome given to

the former Baathist General wearing his old uniform.

 

Shouldn't the "neocons" ask themselves what kind of impression these

images have made in the Islamic world in general, the Arab nations

in particular and, above all, on the Iraqis themselves? Doubtless,

the Arab potentates, dependent for their existence on the U.S., are

impotent in the face of American military power and financial

generosity to them. The expected explosion in the Arab Street also

hasn't taken place. But the impact on the world opinion has been

highly damaging to the sole superpower.

 

As if this was not enough, the third and damnable development has

besmirched America's already plummeting position and blackened its

face. The revelations about and torture of the Iraqi prisoners in

what was once Saddam's notorious prison are so horrifying and

despicable as to put to shame such barbarians as Pinochet of Chile,

Idi Amin of Uganda, Milesovich of Serbia or even Hitler and Stalin.

 

Bush's claim of having been "disgusted" by these "aberrations" and

his avowed determination to punish the guilty take in no one. For,

the woman brigadier-general who has been suspended and some soldiers

who are to be charged have disclosed that the military intelligence

and the CIA had been systematically demanding that the Iraqi

prisoners should be subjected to torture of the worst kind,

including "physical and sexual abuse".

 

It is against this bleak backdrop that the U.S. has suffered another

shattering blow that cannot but have wide-ranging ramifications.

Spain has already withdrawn its 1300 troops from Iraq, as its newly

elected Prime Minister had said, at the time of his election, it

would. Even before the Spaniards went, Honduras had asked its forces

to leave. Dominican Republic followed suit. Poland and Bulgaria have

announced that they, too, are considering that they should clear out

of the Iraqi mess. Whether the Ukrainian troops stay or go back home

does not matter. Because they were the ones to have melted away

after the first clash with insurgents, handing over Fallujah and

other towns to the rebels.

 

This country ought to be grateful to Prime Minister Atal Behari

Vajpayee because he overruled his colleagues and advisers, including

the Deputy Prime Minister, L. K. Advani, who were keen to send

Indian troops to the Iraqi quagmire last year.

 

What an irony it is that the U.S. is trying belatedly to use the UN

as a stratagem to inveigle more countries to come to its aid because

it is not easy, especially in an election year to send thousands of

more American troops to Iraq. To transfer U.S. forces from South

Korea is considered hazardous, if only because the North Korean

nuclear weapons loom very large in the Korean peninsula.

 

Hence the elaborate plan to get a resolution passed by the UN

Security Council that would give the world body a role in Iraq after

the transfer of sovereignty to Iraqis on June 30. The American ploy

thus is to plead with nations like India to send troops to Iraq

specifically to protect the UN personnel "which is quite different

from joining the coalition forces as such".

 

New Delhi would be foolish to fall into this trap. For, the whole

business of transfer of sovereignty to Iraq is largely phony. The

U.S. secretary of state, Colin Powell, has already made it clear

that the interim Iraqi government would immediately have

to "delegate" the sovereignty over Iraq's security to the U.S.

military command or the U.S. ambassador to Iraq until the situation

has been stabilised.

 

Meanwhile, the Iraqis have made it crystal clear that they would not

spare nationals of any country that sends its personnel to help the

American occupiers.

 

It is a good sign that the Ministry of External Affairs has

initiated an inquiry into the presence in Iraq of about 1500

mercenary ex-servicemen, including officers, who have evidently been

enticed to go there. But the new government that comes to power

after the election would have to be wary of those in the

establishment that want this country to be at America's beck and

call under all circumstance.